Sunday October 18 2026
apod
APOD: 2026 October 18 – Sonified: Eagle Nebula Pillars
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 October 18 –… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. Sonified: Eagle Nebula […]
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astronomy
Lone, starless cloud may be a 'dark' galaxy
Astronomers using China's FAST radio telescope have discovered a compact cloud of hydrogen with no visible stars or galaxy around it. This could be one of the strongest candidates yet for an isolated "dark galaxy," containing nearly 500,000 times the sun's mass in neutral hydrogen. The discovery paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 24.
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APOD: 2026 October 17 – 3D 67P
APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 October 17… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 3D 67P Explanation: Put […]
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astronomy
Astronomer leads global team on NASA mission to create unprecedented view of the early universe
A University of Missouri astronomer is leading a team of 130 researchers from 62 institutions—including NASA, the California Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Harvard University—on an ambitious mission to capture an unprecedented view of the early universe.
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space exploration
Plants shift gene activity within minutes of entering spaceflight, experiment reveals
Plants begin responding to spaceflight almost immediately after leaving Earth, according to a new University of Florida study that captured the earliest stages of biological adaptation during a commercial suborbital mission. Published in the journal npj Microgravity, the study reports the results of an experiment conducted by a UF astronaut during Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-26 flight on Aug. 29, 2024.
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astronomy
New 3D model reveals how shadows reshape chemistry in stellar nurseries
How do young stars reshape the clouds from which they are born? A new high-resolution 3D model developed by an international team led by Dr Brandt Gaches from the University of Duisburg-Essen shows how the uneven structure of stellar nurseries creates shadows that alter their chemistry and influence the infrared emission observed by the James Webb Space Telescope. The model has now been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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NASA Names Stephen Cash Marshall Space Flight Center Director
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has named Stephen Cash director of the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, effective Monday, Oct. 19. Cash, a veteran NASA engineer and aerospace executive, returns to lead the center where he began his career more than four decades ago. “Marshall contributions to NASA’s missions are historic and it’s […]
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astronomy
A distant supercluster of galaxies points to self-interacting dark matter
Seven billion light-years from Earth, there is an unexpected cluster of galaxies. It has two regions in the process of colliding with each other with a combined mass of more than two quadrillion solar masses. Given its mass, the distant cluster has been nicknamed El Gordo, the Fat One. What makes it unusual is that it's extraordinarily large for that period of the universe. How did such a large supercluster form so early?
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astronomy
NASA's Hubble spies spiral's edge
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features the edge-on, intermediate spiral galaxy NGC 1827, located roughly 37 million light-years away in the constellation Columba, the Dove. Hubble captured the image as part of a survey looking at 260 satellite galaxies around 22 Milky Way–like host galaxies within a radius of about 32 million light-years from Earth. Hubble has already observed 111 of these satellite galaxies. The remaining galaxies will take an additional 149 Hubble orbits, one orbit for each galaxy, to observe.
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our solar system, space, mars, moons, space exploration
Japan is launching a mission to Mars’s largest moon Phobos
The Martian Moons eXploration spacecraft, set to launch on 20 October, will bring back samples that should solve a moon mystery that has been vexing scientists for more than a century
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Artemis II Heat Shield After Splashdown
Shortly after NASA’s Artemis II mission splashed down on April 10, 2026, U.S. Navy divers captured underwater imagery of the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. In the months after, the agency measured whether the thermal protection system effectively safeguarded the crew and Orion systems as the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere. This rigorous analysis confirmed that the […]
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space exploration
Elon Musk unveils Tesla's 'flying' car
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled what he described as a "flying" car, equipped with thrusters, during a livestreamed event at his SpaceX rocket company's facility on Thursday.
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